International AIDS Research in Anthropology: Taking a Critical Perspective on the Crisis

Anthropological literature on AIDS in the international arena from the 1990s shows researchers' increasing attention to linkages between local sociocultural processes that create risk of infection and the lifeworlds of sufferers to the global political economy. Focus on Africa, where the heterosexual epidemic has attained catastrophic proportions, reveals some cultural particularisms but many more regularities in the social production of disease. Global inequalities of class, gender, and ethnicity are revealed, as poverty, powerlessness, and stigma propel the spread of HIV. Anthropologists' witness to suffering, their concern and engagement, are potent elements in the research process and in advocacy in national and international arenas. The combined strength of theory and practice in the field of international research on AIDS is a significant contribution to anthropology in the twenty-first century.